Certain interior environments, such as clean rooms and hospital like operating rooms, radiology rooms, and dental suites, require unusually clean air for the protection of the work that takes place in them. Such rooms may also have disparate heating or cooling needs at different points in the room. For instance, electronic equipment may produce excess heat, therefore requiring that cooled air be concentrated in its vicinity. Surgeons may also find it prudent to have available additional heated or cooled air in the immediate vicinity of an operating table, to hold a patient at a stable temperature or dissipate the excess heat created by bright lamps or a team of doctors and nurses surrounding the patient. However, the needs of a given room can change over time, as new technology replaces what was originally installed or the room is converted to uses or configurations other than the original. For these reasons, it is undesirable to have air conditioning and ventilation permanently installed as part of the structure of the building. Additionally, when multiple parties provide equipment for these spaces, there is significant coordination required during the design and construction phase to avoid conflicts and interferences in product and schedule. Instead, modular systems which may be installed or removed with only minor structural alterations are desirable.
Modular installation has the additional advantage of making construction less expensive and more convenient. Ventilation structures need not be custom fabricated on-site, nor incorporated into the structure during construction. Instead, modular units may be mass-produced at a factory off-site and shipped to the building when it is ready to receive them. On-site fabrication is then limited to such fabrication and alterations as are necessary to attach the modular units to the building's frame.
In modern operating rooms equipment such as robotic surgical aids are becoming more and more prevalent. These devices make surgery more precise and less prone to errors caused by the inherent fallibility of human hands. Additionally, even in more conventional clean environments, there is a significant requirement for overhead-supported equipment such as light and equipment booms, automated material handling systems, etc. Typically, such equipment is hung from the building structure and descends through the ceiling in order to preserve valuable floor space. However, this arrangement is subject to the similar problems as hard-wired ventilation: it is expensive, requires a custom installation during building construction, and may limit the possible room configurations based on the nature of the underlying building frame.